Costume designed by Andy Klunder for Kenneth MacMillan's ballet Gloria for The Royal Ballet first performed at the Royal Opera House on 13 March 1980. Klunder also designed the set and the original lighting was by Bill Besant.
Descibed as ‘’a meditation upon death’s harvest in the First World War’ (Crisp 1980), Gloria is one of Kenneth MacMillan’s most important ballets danced by companies internationally and likely to stand the sets of time as a significant ballet. At its premiere the Illustrated London News May 1980 noted that the mood of the ballet ‘is enormously aided by the brilliant and imaginative designs’.
The men’s costumes are all-over lycra tights, incorporating incisions with the edges caught back and spaces infilled from the reverse to suggest disintegration. They have long sleeves caught over the hand by a loop and the whole are hand painted and dyed in tones of grey, rust brown and red with a veined design. The head dresses are skull-caps with brim and chinstrap to resemble World War 1 helmets painted and dyed to match the rest of the costume.
The costumes were made by Zeta of Switzerland and painted and dyed by Covent Garden. The head-dresses were made by Vin Burnham

Gloria grew out Kenneth MacMillan's reading of Vera Britten's Testament of Youth and watching war films, notably All Quiet on the Western Front. Translating the horrors of war into balletic terms (and strict classical ballet at that) could have produced a tasteless or embarassingly comic work, but MacMillan's intention was not a realistic depiction of war, but a meditation on death and its emotional resonance. The design problem was to suggest dead fighting men without individualising them. MacMillan and designer Andy Klunder avoided extreme realism to suggest a deeper and more universal experience. In the austere, bleak setting of no-man's-land, all the male figures are visually linked not by army uniforms, but by uniform lacerated body tights in colours that suggested earth, mud and blood, the muted lines like drained blood vessels or exposed nerves. The inserted panels, revealed by the cut-away top layer, were painted to match, and from the audience gave the impression was of wounds or rotting flesh.
Against these costumes, the girls wore silvery body tights with floating chiffon skirts, their heads and faces also silvery, suggesting that they were insubstantial memories. The choreography and design were set in almost ironic contrast to the uplifting, joyous music - Francis Poulenc's Gloria
in G minor.
Andy Klunder presented his costume designs for Gloria to the V&A.